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Troops posing for a comical photograph after fall of German Papua, 1914 (Digitised from a Thomas James Rodoni Glass negative by Chris Fussell)

Gionni Di Gravio, Archivist of the University of Newcastle discusses plans for the recently donated glass negatives of the late Thomas James Rodoni that documented Australia’s first military conflict of the First World War, the fall of German New Guinea. The Collection also contains images from the lead up to the Great War, including what appears to be recruitment drives across Sydney and Newcastle. There are also images believed to be taken at places around Lithgow and Newcastle.

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Here at State Records NSW we are looking at developing a digitisation strategy to cover the next 10 years. The aim is to select material to digitise and make available through our website (much like Sentenced beyond the Seas). One of the core selection criteria for this process is Access and this is where we need your help. We need you to tell us what you want!

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(NB For those of you wondering why some of your favourite series are missing they may be covered by one of the two other criteria we are using for selection; Preservation & Iconic e.g. Convict Indents are Iconic and are covered by that criteria. Please ask in the comments if you would like to clarify if something is covered.)

“Universal Calamity Impending: The World’s Greatest War” was the news headline in The Daily Advertiser from 4 August 1914. The phrase sums up well the air of foreboding that we imagine was hanging around on that day. It was on 4 August that Britain declared war on Germany. And where Britain went, Australia was determined to follow.

With so many interwoven agreements, promises of support and alliances throughout Europe, when the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo the resulting mess was seemingly inevitable. Countries were mobilising even before any declarations of war – Australia included. No one wanted to be caught out. In that Tuesday’s edition of The Daily Advertiser, the editor gave the people of Wagga details on what the Government could offer Britain in the event of war. Prime Minister Joseph Cook was quoted as saying “the Australian fleet is ready, and at the disposal of the Empire, as it has been and ever will be when our navy is wanted to help the mother country.”

On Monday I attended the opening of the UOW Reflects on the Great War exhibition. The exhibition exists both online and in physical form form at the University of Wollongong Library and incorporates a public program of presentations. It runs from 25 August to 3 October 2014.

Stories from during the First World War will be shared via a series of presentations by local experts as part of an exhibition in recognition of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the war in 1914.

Hosted at the Panizzi Room, UOW Reflects On The Great War, draws on collections from the University library archives, the Illawarra Museum and other local collections.

Associate Professor John McQuilton, a co-curator of the exhibition, said the exhibition is intended for those who may have little knowledge of the war beyond Anzac and Gallipoli.

“The exhibition tells the story of the regional community during the Great War through artefacts, manuscripts, photographs and other materials. It shows the controversies and divisions evident during the war, and the cost of the war,” he said.

“It is often forgotten that communities were faced with the fact that this war brought with it the death of the young on a scale hitherto unknown,” he added.

Another group of photographs in NRS 15051, School photographs collection, are images from the Blackfriars Correspondence School.

Over the course of WWI the closure of smaller schools in rural areas led to the growth of the Correspondence School, a distance education method for children living more than 3 miles from a school. Teachers were based in Sydney and lessons posted to and from students at the school.

Many of the images in this group were taken during the Commonwealth Film Unit production of “School in the Mailbox”, a film directed by Stanley Hawes.

Caption: Correspondence School – The mailman calls at a lonely NSW country home with letters for all, and State Correspondence School lessons for the youngsters. He will take away with him all completed exercises from the previous school delivery.Digital ID: 15051_a047_003372.jpgDate: c. 01/01/1946

Caption: Correspondence School – From the Commonwealth Film Unit production School in the Mailbox Directed by Stanley Hawes. With his pet lamb for company Robert has a Correspondence School reading lesson from his mother. All states conduct correspondence schools for country children and all children living more than 3 miles from a school are entitled to the lessons.Digital ID: 15051_a047_003373.jpgDate: c. 01/01/1946

Caption: Correspondence School – Lessons on their way from the State Correspondence School (Blackfriars), Sydney. Everyday P.M.G. mail vans make several journeys from the school with new lessons, and return with work sent in by distant pupils.Digital ID: 15051_a047_003374.jpgDate: c. 01/01/1946

Caption: Correspondence School – From the Commonwealth Film Unit production School in the Mailbox Directed by Stanley Hawes. Under the Blackfriars State Correspondence School’s headmaster’s guidance in Sydney is an enthusiastic staff of 190 teachers.Digital ID: 15051_a047_003382.jpgDate: c. 01/01/1946

Caption: Correspondence School – Among the State Correspondence School papers the mailman has brought to Bill’s country home in NSW, is the latest edition of the school magazine.Digital ID: 15051_a047_003375.jpgDate: c. 01/01/1946

Professional Advice and Project Assistance is available across all the collection areas and other areas of museum practice such as developing exhibitions, museum learning, publishing, security and marketing. Note, if a site visit is arranged a fee to cover costs incurred may apply.

The current embrace of former prisoners of war (POWs) of the Japanese as veterans who suffered undue hardships in the service of their nation belies a more complicated history. Focusing on the immediate post-war period until the 1970s, Professor Christina Twomey explores in her lecture the rare testimony from ex-POWs about how they experienced life in Australia after their return home. Many applicants to the POW Trust Fund (1952-77) certainly believed that captivity had blighted their chances and disrupted their capacity to find employment, connect properly with other people or to settle down and find happiness in work and family life. Whether imprisonment in war caused their problems, or merely compounded an existing structural disadvantage or personality failing, lay at the heart of the Trustees’ deliberations. The way Trustees chose to find an answer, which drew upon networks of information available from private charity and assumptions about who or what constituted a deserving case, demonstrates the limits of sympathy for damaged and broken men.

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